A Socially Relevant Interlude Between Sandwiches

International Women's Day was last week sometime, and apparently there was a movement to blog about women's issues issues for a day. Well, between American holidays and the various Greek festivals, I have enough to keep track of, and didn't really notice International Women's Day until it was kind of late. However, I do feel a little bad about the fact that, given a good opportunity to discuss issues of social relevance, I chose to write about sandwiches.
(All right, I don't feel that bad after all. I really like sandwiches. However, I've now exhausted that topic, so here it comes; the Social Issues Post. You knew it was coming. I went to Grinnell, after all.)

This is about gender, but not about women. See, I saw Brokeback Mountain a couple of weeks ago, at a theatre in downtown Thessaloniki. The place was about half full. All was quiet for the first forty minutes or so; until the first sex scene. At the moment the two cowboys started, well, getting intimate, this audible gasp and murmur rose from the crowd, and didn't subside until the camera had returned to grazing sheep and mountain streams and whatnot. Now, I understand that watching sex scenes is not always the most comfortable experience, and sex scenes between men are few and far between in Hollywood films. But the whole thing got me thinking about homosexuality in Greece, which is something of a puzzle to me.

On the one hand, Greece is the land of Achilles and Patroclus, Alexander the Great, and Sappho. On the other hand, I've noticed that some modern Greeks are not exactly as gay-friendly as their ancestors. It's not that people here are hateful towards gays, they just seem to regard homosexuality as something, well, weird. My interpretation is that, to Greeks, same-sex relationships are kind of like eating a nutella and mayonaise sandwich. It's not a crime, it's just, well, strange, and vaguely distasteful.

I was talking to an eight grade dorm student the other day, asking him what movies he likes. "I just saw Alexander," he said. "It was pretty good, but the filmmakers changed some things from the history."
"Oh yeah?" I said. "Well, movies do that a lot. What did they change?"
"Well," said the eighth grader, "They showed a man kissing Alexander!"
"Uh," I said. "I think that actually happened."
He gave me the sort of look I might give you if you told me that Abraham Lincoln was a drag queen. It wasn't defensive look, or an offended one, just a what-are-you-talking-about look. "No," he said. "That didn't happen." I let the subject drop.

And then there was the Greek acquaintance of mine who once explained to me that "Men eat meat. If a guy just eats a lot of vegetables, well, then he's gay." I raised my eyebrows at this, and explained that a lot of people, including my boyfriend, would be very interested to hear this. "Well" said my friend. "Maybe it's not true for American men. But it's true for Greeks." Recently the same friend snickered at the sight of a Brokeback Mountain poster and told me "I could never see that movie. Gay cowboys? I would just laugh through the whole thing."

Of course, I am definitely not suggesting that all Greeks are homophobic, or that all Americans are completely gay friendly. In fact, there seem to be a lot of Americans who are more openly hateful towards gays than I have ever seen any Greek become. I'm sure a lot of Americans reacted pretty strongly to the aformentioned scenes in Brokeback Mountain. I'm sure plenty of them did a lot more than gasp. And when it comes to blatant insensitivity, how can I forget an American acquaintance of mine who repeatedly referred to everyone and everything that she did not personally care for as "gay." At one point, she actually told me "My father won't let me use the car. He's being totally gay about it." I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or enquire as to which adoption agency had brought her family together.

I guess I just want to know why I heard gasps of shock during a male sex scene, but no aubible reaction whatsoever when George Clooney got his fingernails pulled out during Syriana, or when several people were gunned down in cold blood during Match Point. And, speaking of cold blood, I didn't hear much of a reaction during the opening scene of Capote, when a teenage girl was discovered murdered in her bed, with blood spattered all over the wall. We're used to seeing this things on film, I guess. But sex between men? Shocking!

So homophobia exists everywhere, I guess, and maybe it's not fair of me to gauge the Greek attitude towards homosexuality through the lens of American movies. I just can't quite pin down the Greek attitudes, which are slightly different than the American ones. There's no Fred Phelps here. But there's no gay pride parade either. (At least, if there is, I haven't heard about it.) In any case, I'm glad I felt out the territory before I was asked to teach any more Walt Whitman.